The Machinery of Light ar-3

by David J. Williams

  A man’s waiting for them on the platform. He’s so tall his suit’s obviously custom built. His smile’s clearly visible through his visor. He looks down as Montrose and Haskell are thrown at his feet.

  “Hi there,” says Jharek Szilard.

  The sack of L5 is in full force. There’s a lot of it to bust up. The main structure is a kilometer across. Sections of the Lincoln have melted in the DE bombardment like wax in an oven. The thousands of Chinese soldiers storming through what’s left are meeting with little resistance. Feeds from the suit-cams of the assault troops churn through Spencer’s head as the soldiers close on one section in particular.

  The prisons.

  “What the hell’s going on?” asks Sarmax.

  “We’ve got control of this ship’s net,” says Jarvin.

  “Sure,” says Sarmax, “but what about Sinclair?”

  “We’ll know in less than thirty seconds,” says Spencer.

  The Redeemer’s disaggregation sequence is an absolute last resort. The fact that it needs to be triggered manually is one of several failsafes that keep it from getting activated accidentally. But the Operative and Lynx have already hacked through all the precautions. They’ve won through to this backup control room and killed almost everyone in the vicinity.

  And Maschler and Riley were thoughtful enough to take care of the rest. They didn’t know they were working in coordination with the Operative and Lynx. They didn’t need to. All anyone needs to do now is hold on—

  “Do it,” hisses Lynx.

  The Operative hits the last command. Sirens wail. Airlocks slam shut. Explosive charges throughout the ship detonate.

  “On to the next round,” says the Operative.

  “Goddamn,” says Maschler.

  The Redeemer is breaking into twenty modular pieces. Designed for emergencies that might befall the mother-ship in Mars orbit or beyond, each is a spaceship in its own right. Each starts maneuvering into the L2 fleet on routes already established by the Operative and Lynx. Some of the L2 guns begin firing at the anomaly that’s sprouting in their midst, but most of them hold off in the absence of orders—even as the Redeemer’s fragments close in on them—even as one fragment in particular closes in on—

  “That one there,” says Lynx.

  “Everybody brace yourself,” yells the Operative.

  Still don’t think it’s over?” asks Haskell.

  “Shut the fuck up,” says Montrose. “Jharek, this is an outrage. You shoot your way into my headquarters and—”

  “Please, Stephanie.” Szilard raises a hand. “No need to make this embarrassing. We both know the game we’ve been playing.”

  “I’ve been trying to win this war—”

  “And trying to win the war against me while you were at it. Yes. And now you see why you couldn’t. I’m never where anyone expects me to be.”

  “You’re a traitor,” says Montrose.

  “I asked you not to make this embarrassing.”

  “Spare me and I’ll put the InfoCom net at your disposal.”

  “It already is at my disposal,” says Szilard. “Except for one thing.”

  He gestures at two of his men, who grab Montrose’s suit—she kicks against them, but they ignore her as they rip away the suit’s safety seals. Montrose starts screaming. They haul off her helmet—hold her suit upright while she convulses in the vacuum. It’s over quick—and when it’s done, they drop her back onto the ground in front of Szilard. He turns to Haskell.

  “So nice to finally meet you,” he says.

  PART III LODESTONE’S VIGIL

  My fellow Americans.”

  It’s two days later. The U.S. president is on the screen. The latest one, at any rate. It’s been getting increasingly hard to keep up. Particularly when it seems to matter less and less each time a new one takes over.

  “I come before you at a critical hour. Since I last addressed you, the situation has grown graver. All our peace overtures to the Eurasian Coalition have been rejected out of hand. It is now clear that the only peace the Coalition envisions is one that involves our complete submission. As long as I am president, that will never happen.

  “But I must be candid regarding the magnitude of what has befallen us. We have heard nothing from our forces planetside. All we know is what we can see: that the Coalition has occupied North America, and has begun what I can only term the enslavement of our population. To the extent resistance continues, it is confined deep below the surface, and has no military impact that we can discern. The East’s control of Earth’s orbits is now total, and the buildup of their fleets at L4 and L5 has continued without abatement.

  All of our forces at L5 are either dead or prisoners of war. I wish I could offer you assurances that they are receiving the treatment that the laws of war demand, but I am unable to do so. The East was always capable of anything; now that they are on the brink of domination, we at last see their true colors.

  “We are the only thing remaining in their way. When I addressed you two days back it was to tell you of the sad news of my predecessor’s death. But it was also to inform you that President Montrose met the same hero’s end as our beloved Andrew Harrison: at the head of our forces, fighting for the liberty of all of us. And with her last breath she bequeathed the presidency to me and charged me with the leadership of our nation. I accepted this sacred trust, and with that trust, I swore to be true to the American people.

  “Nor can there be any doubt now as to what we face next. We are confined to the Moon and the immediate lunar orbits. And we still have our fleet at L2. But the Eurasian Coalition controls all else. Once their fleets at L4 and L5 have reached critical mass, they will strike at us from two sides with a combined force far larger than our own. They will seek to crush all resistance and trample the last American flags beneath their boots. They will seek to place us in bondage and rule humanity forever. We are all that stands in defense of freedom.

  “And we have no choice but to be worthy of that task. My admirals and I are formulating plans that will take advantage of the overwhelming overconfidence that the Eurasians now display. They think that they have already won. We are going to show them just how wrong they are. We shall deploy new weapons, about which I can provide no details lest we play into the hands of our enemies. To say we have not yet begun to fight is mere understatement.

  “I know these last few days have tried us all to our very depths. The hours to come will try us still further. Our hope is to destroy the Eurasian ships before they reach the Moon, but this may not be possible in all cases—some enemy units may attain the Moon before our countermeasures take full effect. They may even force their way into the lunar cities. Should this happen, we will fight them every step of the way. We will battle them in the streets and in the tunnels, because there can be no surrender. Because Americans have no place in the dark new order the Coalition is bent on establishing—no place at all, save that of slaves.

  “We did not choose this war. We offered the Coalition an honorable peace, and instead they struck down the greatest of our leaders. The Eurasians have waged this war without mercy, and we will defeat them utterly. We will hurl the East from the orbits, and we will retake our homeland. May God aid us in this sacred task. May God defend the United States of America—”

  The screen beside the window goes blank. Presumably the rest of the screens across this ship have done the same. Lynx chuckles.

  “He’s fucked.”

  “Not necessarily,” replies the Operative.

  “You believe all that shit about secret weapons?”

  “He’s already got at least one,” says the Operative.

  “If he can figure out how to harness her.”

  “I’m sure he’s working on it.”

  “Why would he succeed where you and Montrose both failed?”

  “It’s funny. Everyone keeps underestimating Szilard. Yet here he is, still in the game.”

  “Not for much longer,” says Lynx.

&n
bsp; “Think about it, man. He’s already had more chance to crack Haskell than Montrose got.”

  “He’s certainly done a better job of keeping hold of the reins than she did.”

  “The man’s an expert at keeping out of sight.”

  “So where is he now?”

  “Nowhere near us,” says the Operative.

  “Can’t disagree with that.”

  They gaze out the window. A swathe of the L2 fleet is clearly visible, stretching away from them like a bridge of lights. The far side of the Moon lies beyond.

  “He’s still down there,” says Lynx.

  “Leaving us in a real fucking bind.”

  Lynx sighs. “Surely there are some exceptions being made?”

  “In theory, sure.”

  “But not in practice.”

  “You’ve seen the data,” says the Operative. “If you spot anything I’ve missed, name it. Nothing’s left this fleet. Nothing’s gone back to the Moon. Nothing will.”

  “Funny how our minions don’t seem to get it.”

  “They’ll figure it out sooner or later.”

  “Linehan was trying to strut his stuff in front of the dynamic duo. Telling them that Szilard’s keeping the fleet out here makes no strategic sense.”

  “He may not be wrong.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Relax,” says the Operative. “Feed the current situation into ten battle-management computers and—”

  “They’d just laugh in your face. Tell us we’re screwed.”

  “Sure. But the question is how to play a shit hand. I’ll bet you it’d be a split jury, and at least a couple of those comps would say what Linehan just said—oh yeah, get those ships close in behind the Moon pronto—and the others might say hold back here and engage from long range. Who knows? We’re in uncharted waters now. But none of this relates to the real reason the fleet’s staying put out here—”

  “Us.”

  “Yeah,” says the Operative. There’s a moment’s pause. “Nice to be wanted, huh?”

  “Two of the three members of the first Rain triad, still on the loose, with the Redeemer blown all over the rest of the L2 fleet. At least fifteen sections docked in different places. You and I could be anywhere by now.”

  “But still on the goddamn fleet. Pinned down.”

  “It’s stalemate,” says Lynx. “We can’t get at him and he can’t get at us.”

  “So let’s talk about what we can get.”

  They can’t get their hands on anything that matters. To say they’ve been outmaneuvered is putting it mildly. They’ve been trapped on this stupid ship for two days now. These last forty-eight hours have seemed like years. Long enough to cut their way through to some of the main shafts, not that it’s done them any good. All the places worth getting to involve leaving this ship.

  And that’s impossible. Everyone’s staying put. The crew’s been confined to the ship, as have all remaining soldiers. Spencer wonders if that means someone’s wise to their presence. Jarvin explained it’s just a precaution. Same reason the search parties are combing this ship. The Chinese know full well there are rats hiding within the walls. It’s just that every rat they’ve caught so far is Russian. On-the-spot executions are getting meted out like they’re going out of style. Though Spencer’s got a feeling they’ll always be in fashion.

  Particularly now that the Eurasian Coalition’s under new management. All traces of the Russian zone have vanished completely. China’s making its bid for domination of all existence. Some of the Russian ships have been destroyed. Most just got taken over—repurposed with skeleton crews. Spencer’s got a ringside seat into the fleet that’s building up around the Hammer of the Skies. The size of it is way beyond unprecedented. It’s like nothing that Spencer’s ever seen—a colossal armada, and beyond it are still more ships: the endless reinforcements, long lines of convoys chugging up the gravity-well from Earth. A similar scene is going on at L4. The Coalition’s forces at the libration points already outnumber the American ships behind the Moon by two to one. Meaning things could kick off any time.

  And that would really suck. Because it turns out that Spencer and Sarmax and Jarvin are on the wrong megaship. The one that counts is Righteous Fire-Dragon. That’s where Matthew Sinclair got taken as soon as he was placed in custody, along with all the other high-security prisoners. He’s still there now, because no one’s left this whole time. Not that Spencer sees where within the Righteous Fire-Dragon Sinclair’s being held: he’s got a clear enough view into the rest of the fleet, but not that megaship. It’s the same with Jarvin.

  At least that’s what the man claims. Spencer doesn’t trust him for shit, of course. He’s spent a lot of the last forty-eight hours trying to devise a way to protect himself from whatever Jarvin might pull. Anyone who rose to head up CICom operations in HK is going to be a master manipulator by definition. Jarvin’s faking of Praesidium credentials was the icing on the cake. It was just too bad that he picked the wrong side of the impending civil war. They’re working on getting at one with the Chinese way of thought now. Jarvin gave them the Mandarin downloads. The Chinese zone’s harder to navigate than the Russian. But they’re managing so far. They’ve got new suits, stolen from one of the armories. They’ve got new identities. But nothing’s got clearance to get off this fucking ship.

  Leaving Spencer’s software plenty of time to sort through zone permutations while his mind sorts through everything else. Memories pour over him … the lights beneath the Atlantic … the smile of a woman he used to know back in Minneapolis. He knows she’s dead. He wonders what it was like when the def-grids broke and the rain of fire poured in. He can’t believe the United States has been wiped off the map. He looks at the Moon, and he can’t believe what’s left. He knows this game is closing on its end. He knows that ultimately Jarvin and Sarmax are the competition—figures that’s the only sensible way to view things. Jarvin’s all analysis, no weakness. But Sarmax is getting ever more volatile—progressively more dangerous as his mood gets worse and worse. Spencer wonders what’s bugging him—guesses that whatever it is, it’s not what would be getting to the typical mech in this situation. The typical mech would be driven crazy by inaction—would be going out of his mind sitting there and waiting for the razors to come up with a solution. But Sarmax seems to be a man who’s used to dwelling within himself. Whatever’s eating him is something deeper. Particularly since he’s showing the same signs he was showing back when this run was first beginning—back when he and Spencer were hiding out in Hong Kong. Some demon’s eating at Leo Sarmax. Spencer wonders if it’s the same thing that dragged him back into the game after all those years on the lunar South Pole—maybe even the reason why he went AWOL in the first place.

  But all of it is mere background to the main event that’s going down in Spencer’s head. His primary focus across the hours has been dealing with the thing that’s plagued him for so long. All those files within his head, compiled by the man whose suit is attached like a limpet a little farther down this shaft—and who stole those files from the man held captive in the other megaship. And the deeper he gets into those files, the more Spencer finds that it’s all starting to blur together—the men around him, the ship about him, the clouds of lights beyond—all of it coalescing while Spencer paces through the canyons of his mind, thinking along angles he’s never thought before. The files are giving way before him. Twenty-four hours, and he’s making progress by pure process of elimination. Twelve more, and finally he’s cracking some codes. All those letters from all those faux alphabets—he’s at last seeing a rhythm to their seeming randomness. Something’s coming into view before him. Vast realms of data, and he really doesn’t want to believe what it’s telling him. The audacity of it all floors him. The fact that this is simply the tip of the iceberg scares him shitless. But it also offers a new way to approach the current situation. He keys the conduit to the other two men.

  “I got an idea,” he says.

  The
president’s convoy has been on the move inside the Moon for two days now. Two days in which Haskell’s lived many lifetimes over within herself. She keeps on thinking of the face of Strom Carson. She can’t believe he’s dead. She wonders if he really had turned a corner—if he glimpsed something larger than his own ambition in the moments before he died. She wonders if he died well. She’s wondering who did it—speculating whether she could have pulled the trigger if it had ever come to it. She’s glad it never will. The endless trek through the Moon seems like some kind of relentless dream. President Szilard doesn’t intend to make the same mistake as his predecessor. He believes in mobility. It seems to be working so far—no coups have come close to succeeding. He’s still running things, even if they’re falling down around his ears. Haskell’s been in and out of more maglev trains than she can count. And a lot of crawlers too—moving down long tunnels bereft of rail, en route to the next railhead, shifting through the seemingly endless labyrinth of tunnels dug across the century of man’s occupation of the Moon.

  Now they’re in a shuttle of some kind. She can’t believe that Szilard’s risking a move above the surface, but presumably he has his reasons. His marines have continued to show her every courtesy. She figured they’d be keeping her in a crate. But instead they’ve allotted her comfortable quarters aboard every vehicle. Maybe Szilard’s trying to win her over. Or soften her up.

  But what he hasn’t tried to do is interrogate her. He hasn’t attempted to do what everyone else has—take her apart and find out what makes her tick. She knows he’s going to have to try. Particularly when what’s in her brain might be his only hope of staving off the East. But he’s been holding off. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. She’s a Pandora’s box. Her mind’s a maelstrom stretching out beyond time. She can’t even begin to get a grip on what she’s becoming. Despite the fact that Szilard’s cut her off from zone, she’s somehow eavesdropping on the universe. Static pours across her naked brain, most of it unintelligible, but shot through that cacophony are thoughts, emotions … other minds … she catches images of refugees pouring south into Mexico, of the mass graves the Eurasians are digging up and down the U.S. eastern seaboard. She feels the agony of the planet itself as though the biosphere was a living thing—as though it was flesh from which great chunks had been torn. She figures she’s going insane. She can’t wait to get all the way there. The expressions of the marines who bring her food and water tell her just how far gone she is. They’re all too conscious of the designs scratched upon her body. They won’t even look at her—they’re terrified of her. She knows the feeling.